ap psych unit 4 quiz

Attribution Theory & Person Perception 

• Attribution - the process of explaining the causes of one’s behavior

  • Internal - personal/dispositional

  • External - situational 

• Explanatory style - predictable patterns of how people explain good/bad events 

• Three steps of attribution

  • Antecedent - prejudge people or events on what we know or think about them

  • Attribution - give reasons for an individual’s behavior based on the antecedent, comes from personal experience and/or schemas

  • Consequence - the real reason for the behavior

Biases in Attribution

• Fundamental attribution error - tendency to attribute behavior of others to internal factors

• Actor/observer bias - tendency to attribute others’ behavior to internal causes while attributing our own behavior to external causes

• Self serving bias - tendency to take personal credit for positive outcomes, but blame external causes for failures

• Confirmation bias - we only remember information that confirms our bias, and forget information that does not

• Racism - somewhat unconscious thought process of applying information from our experiences to a group monolithically

• Discrimination - the physical act of behaving differently towards a group in response to attributions which can be shown through negative interactions and sometimes violence 

Locus of Control

• Internal - expect events to be controlled by own efforts

• External - expect events to be determined by external forces outside of their control

Person Perception 

• Person perception - mental processes we use to form impressions of people

• Mere exposure effect - all else being equal, attitudes toward object/person become more positive the more frequently exposed to it

• Self fulfilling prophecy - behaving in ways that elicit behaviors from others that confirms their beliefs/perceptions about themself or others

• Social comparison - evaluating oneself based on comparison to other members of society or social circles  

Persuasion

• To change attitudes

• Elaboration likelihood model 

  • Central route to persuasion - content of message is more important than characteristics of communicator 

  • Peripheral route - little attention to central content of message, affected by persuasion cues that surround it

    • Halo effect - a positive impression of a person in one area, unconsciously influences how you perceive them in other areas

• Persuasion techniques 

  • Foot in door technique - get person to agree to a small request and gradually present larger requests 

  • Door in face technique - request favor likely to be denied, then concede to lesser request

Cognitive Dissonance

• People want attitudes and behaviors to be consistent 

• Dissonance - is inconsistency b/w attitudes and behaviors

  • Causes tension and anxiety that motivates change

• It is easier to change attitudes than behavior 

• Leon Festinger 

  • Asked people to do a dull task and later asked them to persuade another person to do it saying it was exciting and fun for $1 or $20

  • People who got $1 reported a more positive experience bc the $1 group changed attitude to create consistency and the $20 had adequate justification

Social Influences 

• Deindividuation - phenomenon when a person becomes submerged in a group and loses sense of individuality

  • Tend to do things would normally not do when alone

• Norman Triplett (1897) - noticed bicycle races trended to go faster when others were present 

  • Race alone against clock

  • With another cyclist not competing - fastest 

  • With another cyclist competing - fastest 

• Robert Zajonc - social facilitation vs social impairment

  • Presence of others increase general level of arousal

  • Arousal increases tendency to perform behaviors that are most dominant 

    • Improves performance for familiar tasks only

• Social loafing - exerting less effort when performing a group task than when performing same task alone

• Group polarization - interaction and discussion of individuals in a group with similar beliefs/attitudes tends to make them more extreme 

• False consensus effect - tendency to overestimate how much others agree with oneself 

• Conformity - changing one's behavior of beliefs to match those of others generally as a result of real or imagined through unspoken group pressure 

  • Asch’s conformity study 

Factors Influencing Conformity

• Ambiguity - when something is less certain, rely on others opinions

• Group size unanimity - more powerful when 3+ people, if one person disagrees, conformity decreases

• Social status 

• Prior commitment 

• Culture that promotes importance of social standards 

Milgram Obedience Studies

• 40 male subjects, variety of backgrounds who were told the experiment was to study effects of punishment on learning/memory

• Teacher (subject)  is to increasingly shock learner for wrong answers and learner is strapped into chair, electrodes attached to arms 

• When teacher would question continuing, experimenter told him he must continue 

• 26/40 people went to lethal voltage 

1. Altruism and helping behaviour 

   1. Altruism =an unselfish concern for another's welfare 

      1. Helping behavior does not seem to come naturally 

         1. Pick up learning / environment 

      2. The kitty genovese story 

         1. NYC (kew gardens)- march 13,1964 

         2. 330 28 yo woman going from car to apt 

         3. Man attracted, stabbed and raped her - she screamed and came to window - attacker left scene– however nobody came to help or called police - then he stabbed her again and raped her again - she died on the way to the hospital 

         4. Public appalled that nobody took action 

         5. Some neighbors didn't want to get involved 

            1. Later found out one individual called the police but police took their time getting there

   2. Bystander effect - a phenomenon where chances someone will help decrease as number of people present increases 

      1. John Darely and Bibb Latane - had students participate in a discussion over intercom, could only hear students mic that was on

         1. People more likely to help when they are the only one there and not in a group of people.

   3. Why do we help

      1. Social exchange theory

         1. We help when the costs of helping are outweighed by the benefits  

      2. Socialization 

         1. Social reciprocity norm 

         2. Social responsibility norm 

      3. Some factors influencing helping behavior 

         1. Clarity of need 

         2. The person devereses help 

         3. Presence of others - bystander effect: diffusion of responsibility 

         4. Witness others helping 

         5. Similarity to self 

         6. Personality of helper (especially empathy) 

         7. Not busy. Preoccupied

         8. Environmental factors (urban vs rural- population density)

         9. Gender 

         10. Mood 

Attraction 

• Proximity - we like people who are close by, proximity between two people predicts liking, applies to communication rather than physical proximity

  • Interactions  seeing and interacting with people

  • Anticipation of interaction - prefer those we expect to meet and interact with

  • Familiarity 

• Physical attractiveness - we are attracted to what we consider beautiful 

  • Matching hypothesis - people often pair with others who are about as attractive as they are 

  • Costs of beauty - what is beautiful is not good in all way 

• Similarity - we like people who are similar to us like personality, behaviors, activities 

• Reciprocity - we tend to like those who like us

  • Reward theory of attraction - attracted to those whose behavior is rewarding to us 

    • Direct rewards - positive consequences we experience as a result of other person’s presence 

    • Indirect rewards - positive consequences that we experience in the other person’s presence